"The Frog King"

Davenport, Tom. The Frog King. Davenport
Films, 1981. 27 minutes. This live-action film sets the European
tale in the 19th-century dining room of a wealthy Appalachian industrialist.
The Making of the Frog King, 1982. 12 minutes. See AppLit's
Bibliography of Davenport's
Fairy Tale Films and information with photos at DavenportFilms.com.

Davenport, Tom, and Gary Carden. From the
Brothers Grimm: A Contemporary Retelling of American Folktales and
Classic Stories. Fort Atkinson, WI: Highsmith, 1992. Foreword
by Jack Zipes. Storybook versions with photos from the films.

"A Bunch of Laurel Blooms for a Present."
In Marie Campbell. Tales from the
Cloud Walking Country (Indiana UP, 1958. Rpt. Athens: U
of George Press, 2000), pp. 200-201. Collected by Campbell in Kentucky
in the 1930s. This tale begins like Whitebear Whittington,
but the father picks laurel blooms for his youngest daughter, a witch
demands his life, and the daughter runs away to the witch to save
her father. The witch puts the girl in a nice house where a man-size
toad-frog cares for her and climbs in her bed. One night she sees
a man in her bed, and when she throws his frog skin in the fire, it
breaks the witch's spell on him. Her greedy sisters are jealous that
she gets to live in the nice house with a handsome man.

"The Louse Skin." In Isobel Gordon Carter. "Mountain
White Folk-Lore: Tales from the Southern Blue Ridge." Journal of American
Folklore 38 (1925): pp. 340-74 (this tale on p. 372). Available online through library services such as JSTOR. A landmark article containing Jack
tales told by Jane Hicks Gentry (1863-1925) and others, recorded by Carter in 1923. Carter comments on the decline of storytelling among mountain families who used to know them better, although they had not been recorded as ballads had been. This is one of six short tales told by Susie Wilkenson of eastern Tennessee. A frog is the only one who can recognize a louse skin so he wins the king's daughter. The frog takes the girl on horseback to his wonderful home. He asks her to choose whether he should be a frog by day or night and she chooses night. He orders her to pitch him into hot water to make him a man and in spite of her fears of killing him, she does. This appears to be a test of her esteem since "he could turn hisself into anything he wanted."

In Cat 'n Mouse, Jack finds a wife who has been turned
into a cat by a witch.

"The Snake Princess" in Campbell's Tales from the Cloud Walking Country
and "The Bewitched Princess" in Ruth Ann Musick's
Green Hills of Magic (1970; rpt. Parsons, WV: McClain, 1989)
are about men marrying snakes that are enchanted princesses.

In "A
Frog Went A-Courting," one of the most popular folk songs in
Appalachia and elsewhere, the frog woos a mouse.

Compare "The
Frog King" with:

Frog Kings: folktales of Aarne-Thompson type 440 about slimy
suitors translated and/or edited by D. L. Ashliman, gives the texts
of a number of versions from different countries. Other animal-groom
tales, variants of tale type 425C, are reprinted in D. L. Ashliman's
Beauty and the Beast

The Frog Prince - audio retelling at Wired for Books, labeled
as from the Grimm Brothers, but the princess wakes up to find a prince
in her room, doesn't throw the frog against the wall to break the
spell.

Scieszka, Jon and Steve Johnson. The Frog Prince,
Continued. New York: Viking, 1991. A fractured fairy tale with
many humorous details in the illustrations, and a twist at the end.
It raises the question of whether the frog would be happier as a frog
than a human.